History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c23.26

v1.c23.26

Two important inevitable consequences, however, followed from these successive foreign invasions and foreign rules. The people of the Panjab Indo-Aryan as they are lost that love of independence which always everywhere characterises the Aryan people. Strong in physique and warlike and brave in their temperament, the people of the Panjab yet rarely asserted themselves in later history and became independent. The Indian theory of politics explained in the first book also came in to aid viz. that kingship is given by God to those only who have performed austerities in former lives; that the people have nothing to do with the form and the personnel of government and that their duty is to obey rulers established by divine will. The warlike people of the Panjab, therefore, fretted very little if the Arabs ruled from Multan or the Kashmirians ruled from Sri Nagara. Many Kshatriya families no doubt still remained in the land as overlords of one village or groups of villages. Nay, many Rajput families appear to have come back into the Panjab from Rajputana and elsewhere as we shall have to show in the next volume, during the period of native rule between 500 and 1000 A. D.; but they never tried to establish new Hindu kingdoms, and remained content with their petty overlordships. We have often said a Kshatriya or rather Rajput (for the word Kshatriya or Khatri in later times became degraded in the Panjab and applied to Kshatriyas taking to mercantile occupations) must have some place, a petty village at the least, where he may be called a rājā and bowed to by a barber or a tenant. As even the Bhagavadgita observes, Īśvarabhāva or the attribute of lordship belongs to the Kshatriya by his very nature. Yet in the Panjab even among the Rajputs this natural instinct does not seem to have developed into a strong irrepressible desire for establishing self-rule. The people for a long while had become accustomed to foreign rule and did not care who ruled them so long as they were left in the enjoyment of their hereditary lands and villages with their hereditary customs and manners.